Mission Impossible: COMPLETED, With Five Days to Spare!

Ta-DONE: Mission Impossible, 68 x 90

Hello, Lovelies!  Happy Monday and Happy June to all of you!  I am happy to report that I DID complete the quilting on Lars's graduation quilt, Mission Impossible, in time for the church staff meeting last Tuesday!

Off the Frame!  Mission Impossible Quilting Completed, Ready to Trim

Memorial Day was my birthday, and I "celebrated" by spending 7 1/2 hours at the longarm machine in order to finish all of the SID (Stitch in the Ditch) around the flying geese so I could take the quilt off the frame before I went to bed.  

I had considered all sorts of options for jazzing up the flying geese triangles with additional quilting, but ultimately the calendar and looming deadline won out.  With all of the ruler work quilting that I did in the purple background plus just stitching in the ditches of the flying geese, the total quilting time for Mission Impossible clocked in at just over 45 hours -- plus the 8 or 9 hours that I spent marking the background design before loading the quilt on the frame.  Realistically, there just was not time to attempt embellishing the flying geese with additional quilting.

Boring But Time-Consuming Stitch In the Ditch Quilting

I used Superior's Monopoly invisible monofilament thread in Smoke for the SID (with a gray MagnaGlide prewound in the bobbin), and it was a wise choice.  Although the clear monofilament thread stood out and looked super shiny and obvious against my fabrics, the Smoke thread just melted into each fabric as if I'd changed threads to match each and every fabric.  SID is much more challenging on a longarm machine than it is on a domestic machine, in my experience, and I can assure you that I had plenty of wobbles and oopses along the way.  With the monofilament thread, those growing pains or whatever you want to call them really are invisible enough that I did not have to stop and rip out ANY of my SID quilting.  Also, if you look carefully in the photo above, you can see that my stitch regulator is performing erratically, making the 12-15 SPI (stitches per inch) that I've set it to in some directions and then making TINY little stitches when I move the machine in a different direction.  That's an issue I need to trouble-shoot with the awesome folks at APQS Tech Support, but I didn't want to go off on that tangent until I got Lars's quilt finished and off my frame.  That discrepancy in stitch length would have been really obvious if I'd attempted additional decorative quilting in a contrasting thread color.

So I picked the quilt up from church after the Tuesday morning staff meeting concluded and brought it home to work on the label and the binding.

Machine Embroidered Quilt Label for Mission Impossible

The label took me a day and a half; it's not "instantaneous" just because it's machine embroidered.  I designed the label in my Bernina v8 Designer Plus embroidery software on my iMac computer, which lets me lay out the lettering and position the text exactly the way I want it and preview it in an endless variety of fonts...  I went through a lot of options before settling on the two fonts you see in the photo above.  Then I spend time deciding which fabric and thread colors to use for the label, which stabilizers, sew out a sample, and then go back to my software to make adjustments before sewing out the design "for real."  To save myself some of that time and trouble for next time, here are the most common things that usually need to get tweaked after the first sample is stitched:

Rebecca's Best Practices for Machine Embroidered Quilt Labels:

• Increase the spacing between the letters.  When the fonts are shrunk down to the size of a quilt label, the letters are almost always too close together and difficult to read.
• Set the fabric type to "Lightweight Woven" in the design settings.  This lets the software automatically adjust pull compensation for my lightweight quilting cotton fabric.
• At the sewing machine, lower the upper thread tension to 1.5.  Otherwise the bobbin thread gets pulled to the top side with these skinny little satin stitched letters
• Reduce the embroidery speed at the machine 
• Use a water-soluble topping, one layer of tearaway in the hoop (I'm currently loving Floriani Stitch 'N' Wash for quilt labels because a lot of what doesn't tear away will soften and dissolve in the wash), and another layer of tearaway floated beneath the hoop
• Engage the hoop basting feature in my Bernina machine to secure all layers of fabric and stabilizers around the perimeter of the hoop before stitching out the design

Label is On, and Now For the Binding!

I put the final hand stitches in the binding around midnight on the evening of June 1st.  I'm counting that as "finished by the end of May" for last month's One Monthly Goal.  However, against my better judgement, I decided to run the finished quilt through the wash before going to bed so it would be REALLY finished...  

Now, there was never any question about whether this quilt would ever get washed.  It's a bed quilt for an eighteen-year-old boy's college dorm, for Pete's sake.  And I went through 3 or 4 cans of spray starch throughout its construction and made liberal use of Roxanne's Glue Baste-It washable glue to streamline the curved piecing, AND I marked the entire quilting design onto the quilt top with 3 or 4 different kinds of marking pen...  This quilt was always intended to be washable, and it would not have been 100% "finished" until I washed out all of the starch, glue, and pen marks.  

I tested each and every one of the Kona Solid fabrics used in the quilt top to ensure their dyes wouldn't bleed before I started the quilt, and I tested a swatch of the Spoonflower backing fabric as well.  Every one of those fabrics passed with flying colors.  I didn't notice anything when I pulled the wet quilt out of the washer at 1 AM and transferred it to the dryer.  But in the light of morning, I could see that my yellows were all dingy and there were dark blue streaks on some of them.   I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture of it; it was just too disheartening.  I had to just deal with it, RIGHT AWAY.

SO...  I looked up Vicki Welsh's Save My Bleeding Quilt tutorial, since her instructions saved me when I had bleeding red dye on my Jingle quilt blocks.  With Vicki's method, you don't need any expensive, difficult to obtain or toxic chemicals; just a big bathtub full of water and ordinary Dawn dishwashing liquid.

This Is What the Water Looked Like After Soaking My Quilt for Four Hours

Check out how much additional loose dye was released from this quilt AFTER that first run through the washing machine.  I emptied the tub and filled it with hot, soapy dishwater twice more after this photo was taken, until I could scoop out a glass of the water and confirm that it was clear.  Then the quilt went through several rinse cycles in my laundry machine to remove the Dawn detergent and I dried it again.

Fabrics Faded After Loose Dye Removed

The results?  Well, I'm pretty sure the culprit was the Spoonflower custom printed fabric that I used for the backing, which was printed with black and blue water based inks onto white Kona solid cotton base fabric.  Now that all of the loose dye is gone, the backing is considerably faded, but the fabrics in the quilt top itself have lost some of their vibrancy as well.  I love having the Bible verse printed all over the backing fabric so it's worth it to me in the end, but if I had this to do over again I would have soaked the backing fabric in my tub with the Dawn dish water until all of the extra dye was used BEFORE I loaded it onto my frame and quilted it to my quilt top.  I don't mind the fading of the backing fabric at all -- in fact, removing the excess dye made the backing softer and gave it kind of an appealing denim/chambray vibe.  The folks at Spoonflower did advise me in their care instructions to prewash their fabric before using it in a project, in their defense.  I thought that, if the swatch I dunked in boiling water didn't bleed, I'd be fine -- but perhaps their inks aren't colorfast only start bleeding once a mild laundry detergent is added to the mix?  Could a dye fixative like Synthrapol have helped, if I used it on the Spoonflower fabric before I put that fabric in my quilt?  Who knows -- these are questions for another day.  Because on THIS day, I'm just glad that my quilt is done a whole FIVE DAYS before the Quillow Service at church.  I even get to bring it to Show and Tell at my quilt guild on Wednesday night, to prove that I really am a quilter and not just a government spy infiltrating their meetings...  ;-)

Mission Impossible, 68" x 90"

So this quilt top was 72" x 96" before quilting, and after longarm quilting, machine washing, multiple hot water soaks, and machine washing again, the finished quilt ended up measuring approximately 68" x 90".  That was 6% shrinkage in the width and 7% shrinkage in length, using all unwashed 100% cotton fabrics and Hobbs 80/20 black batting.  Still generously sized to fit one of those 39" x 80" Extra-Long Twin dormitory mattresses, with a 16" drop on all three sides of the bed.

The Sexy Lawn Shot

Fading or no fading, I'm still pretty pleased with how this quilt turned out.  It looks just like my EQ8 design, it's going to fit the college dorm bed, it's done in time for this Sunday's Quillow Service, and it's a soft, snuggly quilt that will keep my son warm in his dorm room this Fall!  I learned a lot making this quilt, got lots of practice with the ruler work quilting, and am happy to report that those needle holes on the backing fabric closed up nicely, the quilt ended up perfectly straight and square, the lettering on the backing fabric was still straight after quilting, and there are NO pleats or tucks in the backing fabric.  Those are enough victories for me to consider this a win.

The Rear View

PSST!!  I'd Love to Quilt for YOU!

By the way, if you or any of your quilty friends has a quilt top or two that needs quilting, I'd be delighted to quilt for you!  My turnaround for edge-to-edge quilting is currently running about 2 weeks, and you can click here to find out how to book your quilt with me.

I'm linking up today's post with:

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

FRIDAY

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

·      TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, hosted this week by Lynette at http://whatahootquilts.blogspot.com  

Making a Start: Mission Impossible is Finally Under the Longarm Needle!

I started quilting Mission Impossible last night and I'm SO EXCITED!!!  This is how it looked when I shut off the machine and called it quits for the night:

FINALLY Started Quilting Mission Impossible!

I spent four hours at the machine and got the purple background areas of four 12" blocks quilted during that time.  Since there are 48 of these blocks in the quilt, that means I have 44 hours to go -- and then I have to go back and quilt the flying geese, and then trim the quilt and bind it...  But maybe my pace will quicken up as I get more comfortable with what I'm doing, operating more on "auto pilot" without having to stop and think things through every step of the way.  One thing is for sure, I will be LOTS more comfortable and competent at quilting straight lines with rulers by the time this quilt is done!

I'm using three quilting "rulers" for this:

Tools of the Trade

The two straight rulers I'm using are Lisa Calle's Quilter's Groove Pro and Pro Mini, marked with 1/4" lines as well as handy perpendicular and 45 degree angle lines that I can match with block seamlines or previously stitched lines to keep everything nice and straight as I go along.  The smaller 2 1/2" x 6" Pro Mini is more comfortable in my hand for the shorter lines, but I switch to the larger 3 1/2" x 10" Pro size when the lines are too long for the Mini.  And that other "ruler" (that is technically not a ruler at all because it has no markings for measuring) is the custom acrylic template that Bernie made me to perfectly match the curve of my flying geese.  I shared a tutorial for making your own DIY acrylic quilting rulers in my post yesterday and you can find that here if you're interested.  Lisa Calle's rulers are available in her online shop here (and they can be used with domestic sewing machines, too, as long as you have a ruler foot for your machine).

To keep my rulers from slipping, I've stuck pieces of HandiQuilter's Handi Grip Adhesive Strips onto the large curved ruler, and it's an absolute Godsend.  It's really hard to hug the edge of a curved acrylic template with the hopping foot of a longarm machine without the ruler sliding out of place, but this Handi Grip stuff is like really coarse sandpaper that grabs onto your fabric and prevents the ruler from wiggling even on long curves like mine -- yet it's clear so I can still see through it.  Best stuff ever, and I'm going to stick it on all of my circle templates.  The straight line rulers don't need to grab the fabric quite as firmly and I slide them around a lot from one straight line to the next, so I've stuck strips of 3M Nexcare 1" clear medical tape to the back of those for a slight grip that prevents accidental sliding but enables me to move the ruler smoothly over the fabric when I want to.  The Nexcare tape is great because it doesn't have any adhesive on it; it just clings to the back of the ruler.  If I don't want it on there anymore, it just peels right off without leaving any residue and I can stick it on a different ruler.

Well, that's all you guys get for today because I have some serious quilting to do!  Have a great day, and happy stitching!

Hanging Off the Front of the Frame: So Much Left to be Quilted!

I'm linking up with:

·      Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com

·      Finished Or Not Friday at http://busyhandsquilts.blogspot.com/

Mission Impossible: Marked and Loaded, With 11 Days Left to Quilt, Label and Bind

Mission Impossible is an appropriate name for this quilt on SO many levels.  It's a high school graduation quilt for my oldest son Lars and it's "due" to the church office in ELEVEN days (on May 26th).  I decided yesterday that I am totally okay with missing that deadline if it comes to that.  The Quillow Service at church isn't until June 9th, two weeks after that deadline, and that's the date that's more important to me.  So I'm adjusting that May 26th "deadline" to an Aspirational Goal, like how we "shoot for the stars, because even if we miss, we'll land on the moon."  

I wanted to document what I've done so far, but I need to keep this SHORT and SWEET so I can get back to this quilt...

So, Mission Impossible is FINALLY on my quilting frame today:

Mission Impossible is On My Frame!

It's centered, smoothed, and positioned but not basted or attached in any way yet.  This loading method is called "fully floating" the quilt top because I'm not using the quilt top roller at all; that's why I've wrapped painter's tape around it, to keep its canvas leader edge from flapping around and annoying me as I'm working.  I know; you're not impressed, right?  I shared my quilting design for this top nine days ago, thinking I was ready to load the quilt and get started. 

I dealt with the dilemma of the backing fabric print being off grain by disregarding the fabric grain and cutting the fabric on the pattern, which was printed at a ninety degree angle to the selvages.  It's just that the grain of the fabric wasn't perfectly straight when it was printed.  And I'm happy with that choice, because crooked lines of text across the back of my quilt would have really bothered me, and the backing fabric rolled up nice and straight and smooth this way, which is really all that matters.

Backing Loaded

In Lisa Calle's Meet and Greet the Longarm class at Paducah Quilt Week, she told us that she rolls her backing all the way up on her pickup roller after pinning it on and then rolls it back onto the quilt backing roller before loading the batting and the quilt top.  That's how I did it this time, and I love how that extra step ensured that my backing fabric was rolled onto the backing roller perfectly smooth with even tension all the way versus me just rolling, smoothing, and twisting it onto the backing roller by hand.  In the photo above, I'm in the process of rolling the backing back onto the backing roller and I stopped to take my photo when I got to the backing seam, perfectly straight along the roller bar.  If you click on that photo to make it bigger, you can admire (or roll your eyes) at how carefully I matched the pattern at the seam line so the stripes of text flow across the backing without a "hiccup" at the seam."  

Why am I loading this 72" x 96" XL Twin (college dorm bed size) quilt sideways on my frame instead of loading and quilting it right side up?

1. Because I can.  That's one of the reasons a 12' frame is so useful, and not just for King quilts.  By pinning the longest sides of my quilt to the frame rather than the shortest sides, I can minimize how many times I have to stop, advance the quilt, smooth everything out, and baste the edges before I can get back to quilting.
2. So my backing seam runs parallel to the roller.  If I'd pinned the top (short end) of the backing to my rollers, that backing seam would have been winding up on itself around the roller, creating a lump and not rolling as tight as the rest of the backing.
3. Loading the quilt sideways is going to minimize how much of my quilt top and batting will be hanging down onto the floor while I'm quilting.  I don't like ANY of it hanging onto the floor, but I don't know of any other solution for the batting.  If I did a "partial float" loading method, my quilt top would be pinned and rolled up onto that quilt top roller (the one I've got the blue tape on), but in my EXTREMELY LIMITED longarm quilting experience thus far I've been more successful when I've fully floated the tops, not attaching them to that bar at all.  I'm sticking with what I'm comfortable with right not, so the quilt top needs to hang down at the front of the frame.  I've created a barricade in my hallway to keep my dogs out temporarily, and that will minimize how much dog fur gets on the quilt (and stuck to the batting inside the quilt).
4. However, I would NOT be able to load the quilt this way if I was quilting it with a directional paper pantograph design that I wanted to appear right side up on the quilt.  Like if it was a line of little ducks, and I wanted those ducks to be right side up on the quilt.  

After loading the backing fabric, the next step was to position my batting on top of the backing fabric and baste it in place along the top edge.  That basting line was sewn with my channel locks engaged to ensure that it's a perfectly straight line.

Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly Quilt Batting Basted to the Backing Along Top Edge

I'm using Hobbs 80/20 Cotton/Poly Quilt batting in Black because my quilt top fabrics are so dark.  I've used this black batting twice before, for my Amish Baby 54-40 Or Fight quilt and again for my Math Is Beautiful quilt, and I really like it.  In the same way that a cream-colored natural cotton batting (rather than a bleached white batting) behind a mostly white quilt top can make the whites appear dingy, a white or ivory batting behind a black or very dark quilt top can make the dark fabrics look a little faded right off the bat (pun intended)!  Moreover, longarm machines leave larger holes than hand needles or the machine quilting needles that work successfully on a domestic sewing machine, and those needle holes would be much more obvious if white batting was showing through at the needle holes rather than black.  Finally, although I don't expect to have bearding issues with a quality 80/20 Hobbs batting, any batting fibers that do migrate through to the front or back of the quilt over time are going to be much less obvious if they are black fibers on a deep eggplant purple fabric rather than white fibers.  I purchased 2 1/4 yards of 108" wide batting and oversized my backing fabric as well, to give me plenty of room on each side of my quilting frame to throw a scrap of fabric down and check my tension throughout the quilting process.    Normally you wouldn't need that much excess batting and backing at the sides, but I'm a newbie at this AND I suspect that I may have an issue with my upper thread tension assembly not working correctly, so I'll be doing lots of double checking throughout this quilt.  (Once Mission Impossible is finished, I'll call the awesome folks at APQS support and figure out what's going on with my upper tension).

Okay, so the backing and batting were on the frame; now I just had to toss the quilt top on and fire up the machine, right?  Wrong.  Here's the quilting design that I came up with -- and fell in love with, and have my heart set on quilting:

My Grand Quilting Plan, Sketched Out on My iPad

I knew I had to mark some of those quilting lines prior to loading, but I ended up spending something like 8 or 9 hours over several days marking ALL of the quilting lines.  Christa Smith of Cottonberry Quilts, a wonderful professional longarm quilter whom I've met through the Charlotte Quilters Guild, suggested a  brilliant tweak to my original design, adding a quarter inch echo beyond the edges of the flying geese arcs.  Not only will that help to emphasize my geese circles, but it will also give me a path to travel from one straight line to the next where my purple quilting thread stays on my purple background fabric rather than having to travel right in the ditch, on top of or precariously close to the yellow and green triangles.  So the first thing I did was to mark those arc echoes with the custom 1/4" acrylic template that my husband cut for me:

My Sweetie Made Me a Custom Longarm Ruler!

How awesome is THAT?!  I shifted my acrylic template slightly off of the patchwork beneath to ensure you could see it in the photo, but it's an exact match on those inner and outer curves.  I would not be able to use any of the commercially available longarm rulers for this because my design is not based on symmetrical arcs that come from perfect circles.  And I definitely have not developed the skill of just freehand echoing a curve on the longarm yet, so I would not have even attempted this without a template.  

How to Make a DIY Custom Acrylic Quilting Ruler for Less than $20

Since I designed the quilt in EQ8 software, I used my software to print the entire quilt block at actual size onto cardstock.  Then I cut out the flying geese arc portion of the block right on the seamlines, with no seam allowances.  I used double-stick Scotch tape to secure my cardstock template to a quarter inch thick sheet of acrylic plexiglass (you can get them on Amazon here if you can't find a small enough piece at your local home improvement store), and my husband then cut it out with a jigsaw using a special acrylic blade.  A blade designed for cutting plastic has smaller teeth spaced closer together than a regular blade, and it's crucial for getting a smooth edge.  

My Husband Bernie, Cutting Out My Acrylic Templates With His Jigsaw

Success!

I cannot tell you how excited I am that this worked.  Seriously!!  That sheet of 1/4" thick acrylic that we ordered from Amazon cost something like $12 with free Prime shipping, and from that one piece we were able to cut two templates with seam allowances that I used to rotary cut the purple background pieces for my quilt blocks, plus Bernie was able to cut my quilting template from the leftover scrap.  I mean, where can you get three acrylic quilting rulers for $12?!

My Custom Acrylic Templates for Rotary Cutting

Rotary Cutting These Custom Shapes Was a Huge Time Saver

Of course, the rotary cutting rulers and templates you buy in stores are only 1/8" thick, whereas mine are 1/4" thick.  Bernie didn't want to try cutting acrylic thinner than 1/8" because he was concerned that it would shatter, but I had no trouble cutting these gentle curves with my 45 mm rotary cutter despite the thicker acrylic.  And 1/4" thick is PERFECT for templates and rulers that you're using for machine quilting, because that thickness prevents the acrylic template from sliding under your hopping foot while you're stitching.

Now, I'll still opt for a commercially made quilting ruler when there's one available because those are precision cut with lasers, perfectly smooth, and etched with lines and markings that help you position them accurately on your quilt.  Still, knowing my sweetie can cut custom shapes like this for me opens up a whole new world of possibilities!

Marking Arc Echoes With My Custom Quilting Ruler

So, back to Mission Impossible.  After marking the curved arc echoes on my quilt top with a SewLine mechanical fabric pencil, I used a 5' drapery workroom ruler (similar to this Creative Grids acrylic yard stick) to mark the diamonds with straight lines coming off the block corners.  The diagonal line that goes through each of the flying geese circles is nearly 34" long, which is why it needed to be marked on the quilt prior to loading it.  I continued using the SewLine pencils because I like the clear, thin line they create that doesn't smudge with handling the way regular chalk pencil would do.

Then I used a 24.5" long Creative Grids acrylic ruler to mark my 1/4" echo lines just inside those intersecting diagonal lines, and I'm VERY GLAD I was marking this ahead of time because I messed up and drew the lines on the wrong sides the first time.  It's so much easier to remove chalk lines than it is to rip out quilting stitches!  And that mistake is what convinced me to mark ALL of my lines on the quilt before loading it.  Once the quilt is on the frame and I can only see a 26" swath or so at a time, it would be even easier to accidentally mess up my design if it wasn't premarked.  I bought a cool marking ruler from Judi Madsen at her longarm ruler work class at Paducah Quilt Week, and I am so glad I did because it made it so much faster and easier to get those perfectly spaced 1/2" lines marked inside the diamonds.  It's called the QuickMark Assist Ruler, it's 1/8" thick so it's for marking only (NOT for quilting!), and you can get it on Judi's Green Fairy Quilting web site here:

Marking Half Inch Lines With Judi Madsen's QuickMark Assist Ruler

I switched to my White Clover Marking Pen at this point (the kind that is supposed to disappear when you iron it) because the tip of the mechanical SewLine pencil didn't fit well in the skinny ruler grooves and the point kept snapping off.  Normally, I hate the White Clover Pen because the ink doesn't show up immediately when you draw the line -- there's a delay of a couple seconds before the white line appears.  But that wasn't a problem with this particular ruler since you position it once and then draw a whole bunch of perfectly spaced lines, zip zip zip, before you have to reposition the ruler.  By the time I finish drawing all the lines, most of the ink is visible and I didn't have to wait at all to reposition and keep going.  I almost didn't buy this ruler in class but I'm SO glad I did.  The markings on the ruler are what make it work so well, with registration marks that help you align your drawn lines with block seams and previously drawn lines.  Worth every penny even if I never use it again -- and I KNOW I'm going to use it again and again.  (By the way, I'll be stitching in the ditch at the seam that runs through the center of those diamonds but didn't need to draw a pencil line where I already have a seam to follow.  That's why the spacing looks off at the center in the photo).

Lines Outside the Diamonds Spaced One Inch Apart

After drawing the 1/2" spaced lines inside the diamonds, I switched back to my 24.5" long Creative Grids ruler to mark the perpendicular lines between the diamonds.  Those were MUCH longer lines and I wanted them to line up on either side of the geese circles and diamonds, so I needed every inch of that ruler and definitely could not have marked these lines successfully once the quilt was loaded on the frame.  My original plan was to space these lines the same distance apart as the lines inside the diamonds, but I changed my mind for two reasons.  First, it had taken an eternity to mark all the 1/2" lines and I was nervously wondering how long it would take to QUILT all those lines I'd marked.  And second, I decided that changing the spacing would make the quilt more interesting.  The more closely spaced quilting lines are going to flatten the quilt more inside the diamonds and make that area seem to recede compared to the wider spaced 1" lines outside the diamonds.  Now, if I was Judi Madsen, I would probably fill in every other one of those 1" sections with some kind of fill quilting, but I think I've taken on enough challenges with this quilt so I'm planning to just quilt the lines and leave it at that!

Alright, you guys -- I've just spent 3 hours on this blog post when I only intended to spend 30 minutes.  I hope you appreciated it.  ;-). Just kidding -- I wanted to document what I'd done, how I'd done it, and what tools I used for my own personal reference because my mind is a sieve and there's no way I'd remember those details a year or two from now if I didn't write it all down here on the Internet where I know I can find it again!  But now I've got to get up to the studio and start quilting.  Wish me luck!

Obviously my one and only To-Do for Tuesday is to get Mission Impossible quilted, since I still have to do the label and binding once the quilting is finished.  I'm linking up with:

TUESDAY

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

WEDNESDAY

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com

THURSDAY

·      Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/  

OMG (One Monthly Goal) for May: Quilt and Bind Mission Impossible Graduation Quilt, Due in 20 Days

Okay, you guys -- I think I know how I want to quilt Lars's graduation quilt.

Quilting Plan du Jour for Mission Impossible

I was doodling different quilting options on top of the quilt top image on my iPad last night with one of my drawing apps, and this is the one I liked the best.  It's all straight line ruler work, and I'm fresh from taking longarm ruler quilting workshops with both Lisa Calle and Judi Madsen last week so even though this is a reach for me skill-wise, it *SHOULD* be doable.  

I was drawing my quilting ideas in yellow so I could see them, but I will be quilting them either with a deep eggplant Aurifil 50 weight thread that matches the background fabric exactly, or else with a Signature Threads variegated purple King Tut thread that has slightly lighter shades of purple.  Here's how I drew this design, and how I will be marking and quilting it (unless I chicken out):

Straight Lines Coming From Block Corners to Create Diamonds

First I just drew a diagonal line through each block from corner to corner, skipping over the flying geese.  In real life, this will be a straight line made with a ruler, and I would mark it on the quilt first and then use a ruler to guide my hopping foot as I stitch over the marked lines. I added another line just inside those diamonds for separation.  That line will be maybe 1/4"  or 1/2" inside the first diamond.

Diamonds Filled with Vertical Lines

Then I filled those inner diamonds with vertical straight lines.  I'm not sure how far apart those lines will be yet -- maybe 1/2"?  I want the rings of flying geese to come forward visually, so the background needs to be quilted more densely than the geese.  Again, to ensure my lines are perfectly straight and perfectly lined up above and below the geese, I'll be marking the lines first and then guiding my hopping foot with a longarm ruler as I quilt along the marked lines.

Horizontal Straight Lines Added in the Chevrons

And finally, I added horizontal lines in the chevron areas between the diamonds.  Those lines will be spaced the same as the vertical lines, premarked and quilted with rulers in the same way.

I doodled lots of different designs before settling on this one.  None of the curvy quilting designs did it for me -- I like the way the straight quilting lines set off the curved piecing without competing or diluting their impact.  But I'm a little nervous about quilting this and not 100% sure of the best way to tackle it.  I know step one is always to stabilize the quilt by stitching in the ditch wherever possible, but my quilting design won't allow me to stitch in the ditch along all of the seamlines, just the ones I've marked in yellow in the photo below:

Same Design in Purple "Thread," Yellow Lines Indicate Stitch In the Ditch

In this version, I redrew the quilting design in purple for a more realistic idea of what the quilting will look like on the actual quilt, and so I could easily see where I am stitching in the ditch along block seamlines.  I'll print out these sketches and bring them to the studio so I can refer to them while I'm quilting.

Here are my questions and quandaries:

What Thread Am I Using for All of This?

Ideally, I'd like to use purple thread for all of the background quilting on the purple fabric.  However:

1. My backing fabric is printed with a Bible verse that I want to be legible.  Will all these purple lines of quilting obscure the backing text too much?
2. For both of the curved seams on the arced flying geese, the purple fabric is the high side of the seam, not the low side.  But I'm going to have to travel in that ditch to get from one straight line to the next as I'm quilting the background design.  I was originally planning to stitch in the ditch on the curved seams with monofilament that would disappear on the yellow fabrics and hide any wobbles (I'm still on my learning curve with stitching in the ditch along a curved seam).  Do I just double stitch all of those straight lines in the purple background so I never have to travel on yellow fabric with purple thread?  If so, the 50 weight Aurifil might be a better choice than the heavier 40 weight variegated King Tut.
3. When am I actually doing that curved stitch in the ditch -- before or after the background quilting?
4. I also bought some gold metallic thread that I was thinking of using for some accent quilting in my flying geese.  Do I dare???

What About My Backing Fabric?

As if that's not enough to think about, I discovered that Spoonflower printed my backing fabric off grain:

Tearing Spoonflower Fabric on Grain Reveals a Crooked Print Job

So I need to decide whether I think I can cut my backing fabric crooked to make the writing appear straight on the back of my quilt, without creating a problem with diagonal wrinkles and pleats happening on the back of the quilt or a quilt that wants to revert back to straight grain, crooked writing after it's been quilted and bound.  

The good news is that, despite the scary care instructions from Spoonflower, their water-based inks do appear to be very colorfast even when their care instructions are disregarded.  I put swatches of the custom printed fabric in both hot tap water and BOILING water for 15 minutes with no visible dye bleed into the soaking water, and then squeezed the wet swatches between white paper towels and again, no dye transfer onto the white paper towels.  So I'm proceeding with unwashed backing fabric (my quilt top is made of all unwashed Kona Solid fabrics and the Spoonflower fabric is printed onto Kona Solid white fabric as well).  

Anyway, this is my One Monthly Goal for May and I only have 20 days from today to be completely finished with it, as in quilted, labeled, and bound.  Wish me luck!

May 2019 One Monthly Goal

I'm linking up with:

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com